Of heroes and saints

Someone once pointed out to me a parallel between our national heroes, on one side, and our Catholic Saints, on the other: both categories of human persons are remembered and honored for certain admirable deeds or traits (“virtues”). Indeed, “hero” comes from the Latin (and Greek), heros, which means, “demigod”; while “saint” comes from the Latin, sanctus, which means, “holy”, “sacred”, i.e., of or belonging to God. Obviously, however, the two classes—national heroes and saints of religion—are not identical; they are merely analogous: our heroes are such in a temporal and secular (worldly) context, while saints pertain to an eternal or definitive and tanscendental order. (Read more...)